Martin Hannan: So what sort of city do we want?

On THURSDAY a sub-committee of councillors will decide on the proposal to a build a luxury hotel in and around the former Royal High School building on Calton Hill.

There has been a great deal of hot air expended on this proposal which has its roots in the council’s decision five years ago to appoint Duddingston House Properties in effect as the preferred bidder for the site.

I have made my feelings known about their proposal. I just do not think it is the right plan for Thomas Hamilton’s masterpiece of a building because it effectively masks that very building.

On Thursday, our councillors will be asked to decide on what sort of city we want – it’s that big a decision. Either they go with what I acknowledge is an ambitious plan and ignore just about every planning policy, or they accept that the plan is for the wrong development in the wrong place.

We have already seen the St James Quarter plans being approved despite a load of objections, but I accept that at least the proposals for that site improve the quality of the carbuncle.

The plan up for consideration on Thursday does not improve anything other than take a disused building off the “at risk” list. The new hotel would fundamentally alter the character and nature of a very important part of the city, and I think that would be a mistake.

Having covered planning issues on and off for 35 years and having at one time worked with Edinburgh planning department on various matters, I can honestly say I have never seen such strong and cogently argued objections to a proposal.

They are best summed up in Edinburgh World Heritage’s view, which is stark and uncompromising: “The Royal High School is a building of exceptional and unquestionable architectural interest carefully composed and positioned. The proposals will in effect both diminish the building and remove its setting, placing buildings up to six stories sitting on a raised plinth on either side.

“It in effect turns Hamilton’s building into an object, rather than an integrated part of an historic urban landscape. Our view is that the proposals are exceptionally insensitive to the importance of the building.”

The sub text of their comment is this – approve this plan and you can kiss goodbye to Edinburgh’s World Heritage status. I don’t know whether that would happen, and it certainly would not take place overnight, but there is a real threat to the World Heritage title which, despite ill-informed comments to the contrary, is hugely important for Edinburgh.

I have nothing but sympathy for Duddingston House Properties who I suspect have been led up the garden path by people who should know better. They have clearly spent huge sums on their plans and at most other locations we would be cheering them on and saying “wow”. But this is not “most locations” and this is not just any old building.

As it happens I was present when the British government’s Scottish branch office under the Conservatives gave the building back to the City of Edinburgh District Council.

I have a clear memory of councillors and officials saying the building must be put to a good public use. The hotel plan does not do that, the St Mary’s Music School project does.